Maverick LSA flying car suffers setback after B.C. crash

Last Friday, a bizarre object fell from the skies above Vernon, B.C., and lodged itself in the trees on the edge of an elementary school field. When the dust settled, curious students found themselves gazing at the smashed remains of a Maverick, an experimental flying car resembling a miniature vintage roadster. Even stranger than its appearance, however, are the Maverick’s origins: Developed by Steve Saint, the son of an famed American Evangelical missionary who was killed by Ecuadorian tribesmen, the car was conceived in part as a high-tech way to conduct missionary work in some of the most remote corners of the world. This week, the Post’s Tristin Hopper spoke by phone to Ray Seibring, the Canadian pilot at the controls of the crashed Maverick.

Q: You and a family member were taking the Maverick for a test flight at the time of the crash, which you both escaped with minor injuries. What happened to bring it down?

A: When we took off, the vehicle veered to the left and we actually flew for 10 or so minutes knowing that something was wrong and we’d better get the vehicle back down. It was the final turn to land when we went into a spiral. We used [emergency maneuvers] and power to get out of it and once we regained control of the vehicle, it was then a matter of choosing where to impact, and choosing a stand of trees rather than a school was the safer, smarter bet.

Q: How would you describe the Maverick?

A: It’s a road-worthy, street-legal vehicle styled after a PT Cruiser or a Dodge Prowler; they were going for a 1950s look. And when we want to fly, we basically need to find an area the size of a football field. Then we set up the wing — the fastest I’ve been able to do that is five minutes — we switch from ground drive to propeller drive and then we take off into the wind.

Q: The flying car is produced by the Indigenous People’s Technology and Education Center (I-TEC), a Florida Christian non-profit headed by Steve Saint. How did a Christian non-profit get into aerospace?

A: Well, Steve Saint’s father was a missionary in Ecuador who was martyred. Later in life, Steve ended up living with the same natives that killed his father and they asked him to teach them how to fly. So the idea with the Maverick is to teach indigenous people how to fly themselves instead of having foreigners coming in and doing it for them. The idea is just life and freedom and being able to serve and care for yourself versus being dependent on foreign aid and services.

Q: So is it safe to call the Maverick a cutting-edge missionary machine?

A: It’s designed with that as a goal, but it has vast peripheral uses such as border surveillance or pipeline inspection or cattle ranching; the technology itself is amoral. So while we look to use it in places where people could be isolated and you could perform medevacs or provide supplies, there are many uses.

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A: We heard Steve’s story and were impacted by the sacrifice of his family and his subsequent forgiveness. That was the first we heard of this form of mission and humanitarian work and we just really believed in trying to enable others to help themselves and how I-TEC was going about mission aviation.

Q: Science fiction authors have long dreamed of a future where everyone would have their own personal flying car, but a common criticism is that they would simply crash all the time. Is your recent crash a bit of a PR blow to the flying car cause?

A: This is the first Maverick to crash and we don’t have much control over the PR repercussions. But if anyone is a student of history and looks at the struggles of aviation, this is not that far out of line. We’re going to figure out what the problem was and remedy that and carry forward. Believe me; we’re going to learn from this and figure out how to make it better.